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The Coding Monkeys have done an excellent job of transforming the sensational board-game title of Carcassonne to the iPhone. That's jumping the gun on the review, but if you're already a fan of the addictive board-game published by Hans im Glück then that should be all you really need to hear.…

One of the keys to a good puzzle game is creating something that feels new, but also has an air of familiarity. It is a feat rooted in simple and intuitive design, a form which conjures the thought that, surely, someone must have had the idea already.
Thomas Bowker's LYNE does exactly this. And, no matter how hard we wrack our brains, we can't think of another game that does what it does. Or, at least, none that do it as well.
As the name suggests, the simple goal of LYNE is to…

Meet the Gravity Blocks. There's the mint tea-obsessed Henry. There's Dr Zoidblock, who is working on a zombie vaccine. Blockman loves to recycle, while Blox gets a kick out of removing pesky wormholes. Each block appears in his own set of levels in Gravity Blocks: The Last Rotation, a block-puzzler which requires you to guide your square heroes to a goal by playing around with gravity.
Usually you'll find yourself directing the lead block towards a dot on the screen. Other blocks als…

Ah... the carefree life of the virus: only interested in the act of self-replication and the consumption of every other organism on the planet. Fittingly, the disease-themed Pathogen is a competitive game between two players (either another human or an AI) in which the goal is to infect and consume the board until nothing but your counters remain.
While the developer wishes to give the game an 'easy to learn, hard to master' tagline, we're not quite sure it applies here. To be honest,…

A viral epidemic is, I'm sure you'll agree, a pretty sizeable catastrophe. In Pandemic: The Board Game, no lees than four deadly viruses are spreading their way across the globe. It's up to four specialists to find the cures before these infections become uncontainable and wipe out humanity.
One player can control all four specialists, or four players can work together around a single iPad. The game's rules are pretty simple and easy to understand. Each turn consists of four possible…

Colour-based grid puzzlers are ten-a-penny on the App Store. Throw a stone and you'll hit a Bejeweled or a Polymer or a Crush!, all of which ask you to manipulate and match colours and for points and prestige. The latest game to emerge from this iOS tradition is KAMI, a paper-themed puzzler which has been infused with a powerful Eastern flavour.
You are presented with a patterned grid at the beginning of each level. Using the painting palette on the right-hand side of the screen, your…

Every now and then you play one of these iOS puzzle games where everything just fits into place. Funnily enough, Help Me Fly is a game about connecting puzzle pieces so that everything fits into place. The aim to use building blocks to help the grounded pilot of a toy plane to connect his aircraft to a battery so he can jump start his plane.
Each level features a different selection of blocks arranged upon a grid. Using these pieces, you create a power link between pilot and battery,…

Sqwords refers to itself as a blend of Sudoku and crosswords. We would describe the in terms of creating the perfect board of Boggle, where each cluster makes a word both horizontally and vertically.
This is easy enough to achieve when the boards are three by three. But, as you advance through four other boards, each growing in size, things start getting pretty complex.
Obviously, the level of excitement you feel upon hearing the phrase 'word creation puzzle gameplay' will dictate wh…

Some board games have an extraordinary number of pieces, making the simple act of setting up a monumental task in itself. Now aficionados will tell you that's part of the allure, but especially with a game like Agricola, the benefit of being able to starta game in a couple of taps cannot be understated.
Agricola is a turn based strategy game based around medeavil farming. Now stop right there. Before you cease reading or close the video window, hear us out. While the game may seem ove…

Sid Meier's Ace Patrol is the latest experiment from the acclaimed creator of the Civilization franchise. It's a game that echoes of the combat changes made to the series in Civilization V. Thrown into World War I, you take to the skies as a flying ace. It's up to you to master your aircraft: changing altitude, rolling, banking, and blasting your enemies until they burst into flames. However, these dogfights play out not in real time, but as a turn based experience on a hexagonal grid.…

Sometimes, one tap is all it takes.
Well ok, often it takes more than one tap. But one of the goals of the amusingly named block puzzler Blip Blup is to fill up each stage's tiles with colour in as few taps as possible. Upon tapping any tile, a blast of colour will shoot out in all directions, surging forward until it is blocked by a corner or barrier
There's a preview function to help you out while you're still learning the ropes. Before releasing your finger from the screen, the ti…

Finger Tied is a puzzle game. However, its puzzles are not the traditional brain-teasing challenges you might expect. Instead, the test here is to stretch your fingers, and attempt to move your digits in the manner the game demands.
Each level will display one or more shapes, accompanied by a number of squares upon which you can travel. If there is only one shape, you must press your finger down upon it and drag towards the shape's counterpart, highlighting all the available tiles alo…

As brilliant as a concept may be, if the player can't access your game it's going to fall flat. NVS Wargame - Ninja vs Samurai is an online only strategy title that suffers from many quirks, but most crippling of all is the instability of the servers you're forced to play on.
It's an odd decision on the part of the developer, especially as players can enjoy the single-player campaign without engaging in the multiplayer, however by pairing the two together (units and experience unlock…

Gamers who typically enjoy strategy titles invariably also enjoy the challenge that comes from seeing a mountain-sized burden of knowledge and conquering it to become masters of their virtual domain. Strategy & Tactics: World War II was once tied to the Hearts of Iron franchise - a series some strategy fans should recognize - and while the mobile title reduces the complexity significantly, it's no less opaque in its mechanics.
In other words, be prepared to fail, and fail often as…

[Editor's Note: The developer has said they're interested in fleshing out the combat by adding in 'hit zones' (head, arms, torso, etc.) with each one affecting the monster in different ways. By making this an option players can switch on for their character, there's the potential for at least some level of depth as you weigh up the pros and cons of hitting a weak-spot and potentially missing.]
We're not going to begrudge the Android platform and its initially exclusive titles - not wh…

We've spoken about the renaissance of board games on the iOS before, but one great thing about it aside from fans of these games having digital and portable copies of their favorite titles, is for gamers to experience games in this category that they have never come across. This is the case with us here at AppSpy and Abalone. On the surface it looks like a version of Chinese Checkers but once the rules of the game are explained you'll find one of those games that is simple to learn, bu…